The Trail Read online

  Scott would kill someone over his grades, Jack thought.

  Then he heard Susan scream.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” yelled Susan. She fell to the ground and curled into a tight ball, clutching her knees to her chest. “Oh, my God!” Her breathing puffed in and out rapidly. She rolled on the forest floor, too sick to scream. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Now the words were in her head, or maybe she said them out loud. She couldn’t tell. She didn’t know what was real anymore.

  Kim’s body lay heaped across the trail. Her head, or what had been her head, now rested on either side of the path, two split halves of pulp. Kim’s legs still twitched. The neurotransmitters were smashed away, but the body continued firing off commands to dead receptacles.

  Susan vomited in the bushes, tried to stand, and vomited again. The woods tipped. She felt for a tree, and slowly pulled herself up, using the trunk for support. The world lurched around her. She started screaming again.

  “Oh, my God! What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on?”

  She stared at the body. The head. A single eye peered up at her from the nearest skull half. A lifeless eye. For a second, Susan thought of Jeffery dead on her living room floor. The same lifeless eye.

  This trip was cursed from the beginning. Everything is wrong.

  She screamed again, then starting mouthing words. Little prayers. Bargains. Her lips trembled uncontrollably. Be quiet, Susan! Jesus, be quiet. He could still be here. He could be anywhere.

  She spun around and searched the woods. The trees swayed languidly. The sun was gone. The sky was red. Small clouds streaked across the sky like vapor trails from a jet. Darkness was coming.

  She wanted to run. Run as far away as she could. She would give anything to be back in her house…her new construction home with an alarm system and outside motion detector flood lights. Who cared if Scott called their house “soulless”—he could go to hell. She wanted to be safe and away from this. Away from the woods. Away from anything she couldn’t control.

  She didn’t run. She felt a kinship with Kim. In a weird way, she felt like they had been sisters. What was the bond? Murder? The weight of the secret? Scott?

  She couldn’t leave Kim’s body on the trail. She bent down and grasped the ankles of the corpse. Fighting revulsion, she dragged the body to the side of the path. She used her foot to work the head close to the shoulders. She removed her own windbreaker and covered the mutilated face.

  It’s not much, she thought. But it’s better than before.

  “Susan!” Jack yelled, crashing through the underbrush. “What happened?”

  He stared. The carnage dawned on him and he fell silent. He grabbed Susan tight and pulled her head into his chest. She shuddered and sobbed.

  “God, Susan. How did this happen?”

  She cried and cried. Her words were smothered by her tears.

  “We have to get out of here.” Jack said. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so.” Susan took a few tentative steps.

  “That’s it. Just take it slow.” Jack supported her with one arm, holding his flashlight tightly in his right hand. He scanned the woods in all directions. The colors of the forest were draining into darkness.

  Susan stumbled.

  “Come on, Susan. We have to get out of here.”

  Scott stepped out of the woods and stood in front of them on the trail.

  “Nobody’s going anywhere,” he said, pointing a gun at Jack’s face.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Officer Bryson’s head snapped back as though he had just hit the final drop of a roller coaster. When Bryson’s forehead pitched forward, blood poured from his nose.

  “A good one,” Bryson laughed, recovering from the sheriff’s punch. “A good clean shot.” He buried his broken nose in the crook of his arm. “I didn’t see that coming. Maybe you’re not washed up, Adams. Maybe you’ve still got a little fight in you. Maybe Nicole is good for you?”

  Bryson glanced down at Adams, who had collapsed to the floor after throwing the punch. “Yup, Adams, getting a little pussy gave you some fire, huh?”

  Adams wobbled to his feet and landed a concussion of blows, one after the other, directly into the young officer’s face. The nose soon went from merely broken to smashed beyond recognition. Bryson covered his face while trying to retreat.

  Adams didn’t relent. His fists found their mark again and again. He hammered at the bloody hole of the young officer’s face. The punches carried the weight of betrayal and anger. Adams wanted to destroy Bryson.

  As he lined up a fatal blow with his right fist, he was distracted by a quick movement in the corner of the room. A second metal door had swung open, but nobody entered the room.

  What the hell, Adams thought. It’s gotta be a trap. He backed away from Bryson, who fell to the floor. The sheriff glanced around the chamber of death and looked at the stainless steel vats of blood. He studied the red irrigation system that ran along the walls. The collection pit of souls.

  I’ll take my chances, Adams decided. He crept through the steel door and into the underground tunnel. As Adams advanced through the dirt tube, his stature changed from a twisted crouch to an upright walk. The progression reminded him of the evolution posters he’d seen in his high school biology class—savage monkey to civilized man.

  Adams was pretty sure that what he’d just witnessed was the opposite of evolution. More like a backward march into the center of hell.

  After a time, he came to a green door. It felt cold to the touch. The night air? Adams wondered. He turned the knob and pushed. Not outside. Just another room. This one similar to the first, with a network of intersecting stainless steel troughs. Only this room contained something else. Sheriff Adams could only describe what he saw as experiments. Horrible experiments.

  The corpse of a forty-something woman lay on a metal table in front of him—Vanessa, one of the cashiers at the Crenson Market. Most of her skin was gone, carved away neatly with a surgical blade. Her left leg had been removed. In its place appeared to be a man’s leg, hairy and longer, hastily stitched together in some sort transplant attempt.

  Adams scanned the room. Mutations and deformities decorated every wall. Some were genetic, the wretched offspring of the secret Crenson inbreeds. Others were man-made, the nightmare fantasies of a sadistic butcher.

  He fell backwards, on the verge of losing consciousness again. He knocked against a table. The sheriff looked down at a young boy missing his eyes and nose, and at what had replaced them…

  “What the fuck!”

  Adams veered towards the door, feeling like a drunk trying to find the exit at a party. He escaped the room and ran through the dark, twisting labyrinth. He couldn’t tell if the maze led him deeper into the earth or brought him closer to the surface. At times, the path appeared to do both at once. He had definitely traveled too far to still be underneath the old church.

  The tunnels must go all over Crenson.

  Finally he came to a plain brown door. He did not feel the wood this time, nor did he press his ear against the frame and listen. Nearly crushed by fatigue and unafraid to die, he pushed into the room without pause.

  His eyes widened.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  “Don’t fucking move!”

  “Scott, what are you doing?”

  “Just don’t fucking move!” Scott said, bobbing the point of the gun back and forth between Jack and Susan. “I’ll fucking shoot you. I swear to God, I’ll fucking shoot the both of you.”

  Jack jumped in front of Susan. “Calm down, Scott! Jesus! Just calm the hell down!”

  Scott stood on the trail. His chest heaved. He couldn’t see the details of Susan’s face. The darkness ate away her features. He was glad he couldn’t see her eyes. Everything will be easier this way, he thought.

  “What are you doing, Scott?” Susan asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because
you know too much. Too many secrets. Too many fucking secrets.”

  “Scott, what are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  The gun wavered. A stick popped somewhere nearby. Scott peered off into the woods. His voice came out breathless and unfocused. “Todd Stork…the hiker…everything.”

  “Scott!” Susan yelled. “Scott! Those things don’t matter anymore. Something worse has happened.”

  “Worse?”

  “Kim’s dead,” Jack said.

  “Dead? You’re lying.”

  “I’m not, Jack. She was murdered.”

  Scott stared hard at both of them. “Show me the body.”

  They walked down the trail. Bullshit, Scott thought. Fucking liars. They just want to fuck with me so they can escape and pin that dead hiker on me. Jack shot him. Not me. I’m not gonna go down for that. And Stork. Todd fucking Stork. I should’ve never told Susan. She’ll tell. If not when we get back, it will all come out in the divorce. I’ll have to kill her here in the woods. Maybe I planned it all along. And Jack now, too. The both of them. Maybe.

  They approached a body on the side of the trail. Legs poked out from beneath Susan’s windbreaker. Blood ringed the jacket.

  Scott remained behind the others, and directed them with his gun. “Pull the jacket off.”

  “It’s Kim, man,” Jack said.

  “Pull the fucking jacket off!”

  Jack knelt down and tugged at the nylon.

  Scott stared at Kim’s spit skull without flinching.

  “How’d this happen?”

  “We don’t know,” Susan said. “I was just walking along the trail and I found her like this.”

  Jack covered the head again.

  “Someone is out here, Scott,” Susan said. “Someone is out here killing people. Probably the same person responsible for those missing hikers. Now he’s after us, Scott! We have to get out of here! We have to work together. Scott, please put that gun down!”

  Scott looked at the gun in his right hand, thinking, and then lowered the pistol. “I’m sorry, Susan. Jack, man. I’m sorry. I guess I just got freaked out, with the hiker you killed and all. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, guys. And Susan, I never hurt that kid in college on purpose. I was just messing with you.” He paused, studying their faces. “I guess I felt like you two were teaming up on me, and I wanted to show you that I was powerful or something. I would never hurt anyone. Honest. I’m sorry.”

  He reached out for Susan. She hesitated for a moment, and then came into his embrace.

  Scott held his wife and smiled.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Sheriff Adams emerged from the underground labyrinth. He inhaled the pine-scented air and surveyed the darkening forest. Adams stumbled through the woods with no direction or plan. Soon, he spied little reflective beads shimmering on the trees, picking up the light of the moon. He recognized those beads as markers for the Appalachian Trail. He wondered if they were legitimate in this section of the woods. He followed along, and the markers felt true. The trail worked its way through the woods with a certain rhythm and purposeful bend.

  In the darkness of the night, follow the beads of light. He remembered that saying about hiking the trail after dark. The reflective markers could save your life if you were lost in the woods at night. Adams labored along the path, still wearing the incongruous black leather dress shoes.

  If I could just get to the trail head I could find a road and flag down a car.

  Adams laughed. He thought of how he’d look to a passing motorist. Blood drenched clothes. Swollen face. Police uniform in tatters. He doubted anyone would stop. Protect and serve? Adams knew he currently resembled a predator more than a protector.

  The beads danced with each step the sheriff took. Despite the pain, despite the damage to his body, Adams thought about hiking. For the first time in his life, he could see why people did it. Why it might be nice to get away from society. To simply walk away.

  If I ever get out of this, he thought, I’ll go hiking with Nicole.

  He wondered what Nicole was doing now. Was she sweeping the floor of her home, still thinking about her deceased husband? Or did the sheriff’s visit rouse her out of mourning?

  Is she thinking about me?

  What was the connection between Nicole’s husband John and Martin Levy? Sure, they had grown up together, but Adams suspected their relationship went deeper.

  Bryson. He’d never in a million years have guessed Bryson would be caught up in this shit, this small-town Crenson shit. Bryson wasn’t from around here. He didn’t seem the type.

  Glick. That bastard. He thought he’d heard the last of Glick years ago, when his black mass folded up and left town. Why is he back in Crenson? Why here? Why now?

  Martin Levy. Glick’s brutal henchman. Where was he tonight, under this full moon? Sizing up a victim? Silently observing behind a tree? Or did he already have a victim? Was he preparing the body for that chamber of horror beneath the church? Martin would strike again. But where? When?

  Adams continued stumbling along, uneasy. Something kept nagging at him. What is it? What is it? He walked a few more feet and it hit him: The campers! Where the hell are those four campers? Where did they say they were heading? The lake?

  Sheriff Adams was so lost in thought that he almost tripped over the dead body on the trail.

  Chapter Eighty

  “Oh, Christ!” Adams yelped, peering down at the carnage. Even in gray, moon-blotched light, Adams could see the most significant details. Female. Massive head trauma. Jesus! Her head’s split in two.

  He blinked, shuddered, and sighed deeply.

  When will it end? he wondered. His instincts told him to keep moving. To remain with the body would make him feel like a target.

  Make no mistake about it, he told himself. I am a target.

  He staggered down the trail a few more yards, then froze. Voices. A woman and a man. Maybe two men. The tone of their speech suggested an argument.

  Adams tightened his grip on his hiking stick, a thick branch he’d found on the path, and proceeded slowly down the trail. He stopped and listened to the voices.

  -“I don’t care, we need to go!”

  -“And where would we go? We already got lost hiking in! What makes you think we can hike out in the dark?”

  -“I don’t know. I just know that we have to get out of here. We have to keep walking.”

  Adams leaned on his stick. The campers. It’s the campers.

  -“If we leave now we’ll get caught. They’ll find out about the dead hiker! We need to wait until tomorrow. That was the original plan. We need to stick to that!”

  “Fuck the original plan, Scott! The original plan went out the window when Kim was killed! Don’t you realize the killer is still out there?”

  -“I realize that, Jack. But I’m just looking out for you, man. You killed that hiker. If we leave now they’ll pin it on you.”

  -“I appreciate your deep concern for me, but if we stick around, the person that killed Kim is going to be back for us. And I sure as hell don’t want my head hacked in half.”

  -“He won’t come back if we’re all together. He only goes after people that are alone.”

  -“Either way, Scott. I think we should get out of here tonight.”

  -“But where do we go? We can’t see shit in the dark!”

  -“We could follow those reflective lights. Those trail markers on the trees. We could just follow them to the trail head. I think they go to the parking lot.”

  -“Jack! You’re not listening. We got lost following the trail coming in. Someone messed with the markers. We can’t see anything, and we don’t even know where the trail leads anymore. Let’s just stay put.”

  Crack! The hiking stick snapped in half, and Adams teetered unsteadily.

  “Who’s there? Who the fuck is there?”

  Adams turned to run, then stopped. I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake! I don’t need to run. Still, he remained silent in the shado
ws. Yeah, I’m a cop, he thought. But I’m also an unarmed cop.

  Flashlight beams darted through the trees, probing for the source of the sound. A ray of light caught Adams full in the face.